more stats...woohoo

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I'd be more interested in learning what the statistical trends are of the people that gotten in, like higher average GPA over the previous entering class. The thing that worries me is that due to the lousy economy alot more people apply to grad schools and some of that may also include dental schools. Should I not worry about this, is this a complete waste of my energy?
 
There is a definite upward trend in the number of people applying to dental school. There is nothing you can do about it. All you can do is do well in school and the DAT. Good thing is relatively new schools like UNLV, Arizona, and Nova opening up well offset the increase of people.
 
Bad news: that will increase the # of practicing dentists resulting in more competition once we all get out!!! I hope ADA is somehow regulating this.

I would rather have too much competition getting into school than have too much competion when I get out. I hope new schools don't start "popping" up in years to come. And if they do, I hope there is a correlation between projected demand of dentistry (which is hard to predict) and new schools being established.
 
The great thing about dentistry is that if the competition becomes insane in large cities, we all have the option of moving to underserved areas.

Sure, this may seem obvious but when compared to other industries, it's a major advantage that health care professionals have.

I used to work in corporate sales. When I got layed off 3 years ago, I was limited to jobs in large urban areas. I could never move to a suburb or a small town and actually earn more money. As a dentist, you will have this option. If you find that you can't afford to pay the bills one day, move to some place in the Midwest or the Southwest. Of course, it's not as much fun as living downtown somewhere, but it beats being unemployed like many Americans are today.
 
You are right, but if schools start producing too many dentists (far fetched I know) that outweigh the OVERALL demand for dentistry nationwide, dentists WILL start moving to places where there is less competition. But, what happens when all those once underserved areas get saturated with dentists. Then what? We are back in the same situation we started.

The point I'm trying to make is, the ADA SHOULD be regulationg this. However, I don't really know if they are or not. I do know that medical school admissions are regulated. Some people argue that they do this to keep the supply of physicians low relative to demand to keep physician salaries artificially high. But, that is a whole other argument. It's all about supply vs demand. This is true for any profession.
 
Originally posted by critterbug
Bad news: that will increase the # of practicing dentists resulting in more competition once we all get out!!! I hope ADA is somehow regulating this.

I would rather have too much competition getting into school than have too much competion when I get out. I hope new schools don't start "popping" up in years to come. And if they do, I hope there is a correlation between projected demand of dentistry (which is hard to predict) and new schools being established.
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That's the nice thing about dental schools; they are too expenseive to open up. I don't know anything about Nova. I do know that UNLV is state funded and that obviously helped that school take off. I do know that the Arizona school had to implement major cost cutting measures to get off the ground. It's one reason why they haven't hired permanent faculty.

I know Midwestern University in Glendale, AZ wanted to start a dental school and model themselves after Nova. But after crunching the numbers, they discovered it was too expensive. And they quickly nixed the idea of adding a second dental school in Arizona despite there being a demand for it even with the current Arizona school. Midwestern is not cheap either. They designed and built a podiatry school in less than 2 years. So they were seeking to branch out.

The biggest problem with opening a dental school according to the President of Midwestern Glendale campus involved hiring dental professors and building the clinic with all of the equipment like chairs etc.

It's much easier to open a medical school than a dental school. You essentially need a gross lab and staff to teach the basic sciences. Third and Fourth year rotations can be done off campus. That's why you have foreign medical schools popping up all over the place. They just set up their basic sciences and pay hospitals to train their students during 3rd and 4th year. It's what Midwestern does. We have no affiliated teaching hospital connected to our school.

But you can't do that with dental school. You have train your students on site. That's why none of us should worry about dental schools just appearing out of thin air. The Arizona school was a long term effort. They have been wanting to put a dental school in Arizona for a long time. It's sad that the 5th largest city in the U.S. just got one. I assure you, it didn't happen overnight. 🙂

To be honest with you, I wouldn't be suprised if a few more state funded dental schools closed. I was told Oklahoma was on the verge of shutting down. The reason is because the state loses a lot of money on their dental school especially if their residents move elsewhere.
 
Yes, but what happens when *existing* schools start increasing their classroom capacities. Some schools might look at all these quality applicants and say hum, why don't we increase our class size and make more money.... Again, does anyone regulate this? The schools are typically gonna look out for their best interests (ie MO MONEY) rather than the overall best interest of the profession. Right? Unless their is some kind of outside force who is regulating like there is in medicine.
 
Originally posted by critterbug
Yes, but what happens when *existing* schools start increasing their classroom capacities. Some schools might look at all these quality applicants and say hum, why don't we increase our class size and make more money.... Again, does anyone regulate this? The schools are typically gonna look out for their best interests (ie MO MONEY) rather than the overall best interest of the profession. Right?
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Like I said, I don't know if they can even if they wanted to. Remember, unlike medical schools, dental school train their students on site. There is only so much room and resources they can provide. They can't just ship them out to hospitals for 3rd and 4th year like medical schools can. It's why dental class sizes have remianed relatively stagnant. On the other hand, medical school classes have increased.
 
To be honest with you, I wouldn't be suprised if a few more state funded dental schools closed. I was told Oklahoma was on the verge of shutting down. The reason is because the state loses a lot of money on their dental school especially if their residents move elsewhere.
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Interesting. Didn't know that.
 
I think we also need to take into consideration the number of schools that have closed in the past 10-20 years. I remember reading somewhere that the number of graduates were significantly higher in the 70's than there are today. I think something like seven schools have closed in the past 20 years, and maybe the increase in schools now is only due to a needed increase.
 
Originally posted by critterbug
Bad news: that will increase the # of practicing dentists resulting in more competition once we all get out!!! I hope ADA is somehow regulating this.
Click to expand...

It won't affect that at all! The rate of dentists retiring STILL will far outweigh the rate of those coming out of school.
 
Originally posted by mcataz
cost cutting measures to get off the ground. It's one reason why they haven't hired permanent faculty.

I
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Sorry, but that statement is incorrect. There are currently 16 permanent ASDOH faculty members. More have not been hired because the curriculum committee didn't want to hire more.

To give you some background, the curriculum committee is made of up current deans from other schools, former deans, and past and current presidents of the ADEA.

When this committee was asked what the one thing they would change about their schools would be, they all answered "NOT having tenured faculty".

Having a LOW number of tenured/full-time faculty was not a cost cutting measure, but was a measure that other dental school deans said they wish they had.
 
Originally posted by mcataz
The Arizona school was a long term effort. They have been wanting to put a dental school in Arizona for a long time. It's sad that the 5th largest city in the U.S. just got one. I assure you, it didn't happen overnight. 🙂
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No, but it was pretty close. From the time the committee (I mentioned it in my previous post) had their first meeting to the time we had orientation was 28 months.

Some schools can't get their clinics repainted in 28 months.

It WAS nearly overnight.
 
critterbug - stop freaking out!

Like someone mentioned, the number of dentists retiring still outweighs the number graduating. And the previous posters have made some very good points about why it is impossible to just arbitrarily decide to increase class size.

"From 1986 to 2001, seven dental schools closed."- This is from an article about the new dental school in Arizona opening up. So in that time period, 7 closed but 3 opened (Nova, UNLV, Arizona) so that means we are still at 4 less dental schools than we were 16 years ago. And the underserved populations from 1986 are still around today. The dental schools that closed were all private Emory, Washington University in St. Louis, Georgetown, Loyola (Chicago), Fairleigh Dickinson (NJ), Oral Roberts, and Northwestern.
 
Sorry, I sometimes do that 🙂

I just hope the economic stability of this profession is preserved in years to come.....thats all. I am ever so reminded of how lawyers salaries have decreased over the years, mainly because lawyers are a dime a dozen now.

I know it is far fetched, but who knows what the future holds. All I know is that the trend is starting to show that more and more individuals are choosing dentistry over medicine, and I don't see that trend ending any time soon. But, rationally speaking, I don't think they will open up dental schools or increase class size because of it. I just think dentistry is gonna become more and more competive to get into, which is the way it should be.

HERE is a great article pertaining to past trends of applicant:enrollee ratios. WOW look at Figure 1. It seems enrollment has remained fairly stagnant regardless of application rate. That's a good sign.
 
Now critterbug, I like the sound of that attitude!

And I think the ADA does indirectly control the # of new dentists graduating each year, because the dental schools have to be accredited by the ADA in order for your DDS to have any meaning.
 
Anybody think that this increase of applicants is temporary and won't last long. This thing has been going on for the last 2 or 3 yrs. How long can a "jobless" economy last without generating jobs? I think this is long overdue so that if this happens the rush of applicants will go back to more reasonable levels.🙄

Hey critterbug,
I hear pharmacists are in short supply. A number of potential dental students could be diverted to pharmacists. They pay some ridiculous amounts of money. Some even go as high as $100K+😱 I checked the average at salary.com which is around $60-$80K at that level it's bound to attract a lot of interest. Not to mention the less glamorous Nursing which is
also in high demand. First its the IT rush of 4 or 5 yrs ago now its the healthcare crush.😱 Wonder what could possibly be next?
I hope its something like finance, that would massively seduce a lot of people:laugh:

Right now the way it seems to stand just like the job market too many applicants chasing few spots especially in pharmacist programs. I overheard this pertaining to Northeastern University at Boston.
 
blankguy

Most view denstistry as the last health profession that allows complete and total freedom and automony. Pharmacy has been taken over by large corporations and has made pharmacists just another employee "pill pusher" in my opinion. Mom and Pop pharmacy's have become a thing of the past. No interaction with patients + no autonomy + comfortable salary (but no real potential to capitalize) = pharmacist.

Dentistry is where its at and people are starting to realize that. IMHO, the potential is unlimited ( ie skys the limit 🙂) With the way medicine is going, many pre-meds will find dentistry to be a better alternative without all the headaches. I have worked in corporate america for that past 3 years and I understand and appreciate how important autonomy is. It has to be one of the major reasons why I want to be a dentist.

DENTISTRY = FREEDOM
 
Dental numbers will continue to go up and up.

Law school is now viewed by many as an option for those who don't really have any plans but still want to attend graduate school.

The ADA closely monitors our professional numbers. Still, until everybody has oral health care access there is a major shortage!

It may mean that not everybody can work in California -- but it does NOT mean that there is a glutton of dentists.
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC
Dental numbers will continue to go up and up.
Click to expand...

By this do you mean number of dentists per capita will go up, or dental admissions?
 
FREEDOM!!!!!
Cant agree more.
Without being bound, lot more choices to make for the patients.
 
Originally posted by ItsGavinC

It may mean that not everybody can work in California -- but it does NOT mean that there is a glutton of dentists.
Click to expand...


Even California has a shortage. We all know about the overflow of dentists in metro areas, but most people don't realize some counties in Ca has less than 10 dentists!!! (counties up north) It all depends on where your willing to work.
 
Critterbug-

As everyone else has said, take a second and relax. The shortage of dentists compared to the population will not be overcome in any of our lifetimes.

If you are planning on becoming a dentist, you need to change your motivations I think. As someone soon to enter the dental field, it is a desire of mine to provide dentistry to people who don't have access now. For you to oppose more dentists is selfish and motivated by your desire to make a good living. While we all want to do this, I would hope for a majority of us the number 1 priority is providing dental care to the people of this country (even if that means in areas with many dentists and more competition).

mcataz is correct about the costs for dental school. I attend a state school and recently spoke w/ the asst dean and he was talking how they wanted to up the class size but with the budget crisis there was no way they could (as a side note, he told me they even accepted too many as they didn't know they wouldn't have the funds and had to sit there and pray that some people would turn it down).

More dentists=good...for the people we want to treat. The money and stability will always be there, don't sweat it.
 
Is insurance HMO/PPO going to be a problem in the future?
 
Up trend for dental schools is good, but it also means it is getting harder and harder for the applicants like us to get in. If we have getten in, I might start feeling that getting harder is good to raise the quality of dental students even higher, but not at the time that I am still applying....
 
ecdoesit,
Your question is probably in the back of everyones mind with respect to the ultimate fate of the health care industry. It is actually a tough question to answer without complete certainty. I wonder if utilizaton review boards are even necessary for dentistry. Are standardized guidelines really necessary in dentistry, guidelines that essentially second-guess the doctor, as they do in medicine? I think that a dentists decision to treat a patient is always going to remain his/hers. As long as quality of care is not seriouslly compromised then it should not be necessary to have HMOs breathing down their back! Medicine just got so expensive and it was felt that doctors had too much control and were profitting way too much back in the 70s. I don't think dentistry has gotten to that point yet. At what point will ethical choices based on restrictions and decisions made from third party non-dental affiliated🙂 individuals happen? I say we have a long way from that happening in dentistry, because dentistry is a pretty concrete and stable profession less-pressed with the dillemas that face medicine. Medicine just got too complex and ahead of itsself, and managed care and HMOs made it worse trying to fix it. For HMOs, its a money issue, not a quality of care issue! I think HMOs will never show their face in dentistry because if people had a choice they would probably eliminate it completely. It has just gone too far, but since its pit-fall are clearly known, nobody will let it happen again--in dentistry that is.

As with PPOs, I don't see why that can't happen---but is it necessary in dentistry? How many dental providers are necessary to formulate the PPO network. With medicine, you have different specialists and primary care providers that make up a PPO. I wonder if dentists could somehow be included in the physician PPOs, if they are not already. Hmm 😕

My two cents

-Richard
 
Originally posted by DcS
Critterbug-

As everyone else has said, take a second and relax. The shortage of dentists compared to the population will not be overcome in any of our lifetimes.

If you are planning on becoming a dentist, you need to change your motivations I think. As someone soon to enter the dental field, it is a desire of mine to provide dentistry to people who don't have access now. For you to oppose more dentists is selfish and motivated by your desire to make a good living. While we all want to do this, I would hope for a majority of us the number 1 priority is providing dental care to the people of this country (even if that means in areas with many dentists and more competition).

mcataz is correct about the costs for dental school. I attend a state school and recently spoke w/ the asst dean and he was talking how they wanted to up the class size but with the budget crisis there was no way they could (as a side note, he told me they even accepted too many as they didn't know they wouldn't have the funds and had to sit there and pray that some people would turn it down).

More dentists=good...for the people we want to treat. The money and stability will always be there, don't sweat it.
Click to expand...

You are correct, and I agree with everything you say. However, if I gave you the wrong impression about myself, I apologize.

As long as their is a need for dentistry, increased enrollment is a good thing. However, increased competition in the real world can be a bad thing for the patient as well as the dentist trying to pay the bills. An area that is over supplied with dentists (such as California for example) is a perfect environment for managed care to come in and take over. And we all know how managed care can indirectly or directly affect the quality of dentistry being offered to the patient.


Here is a thread I started about managed care in dentistry. A few practicing dentists were able to come in and make some great comments about supply and demand and its affect on the prevelance of managed care.


http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72208&highlight=dentistry+years
 
Thanks for the link critterbug!
 
I was browsing the UOP website and I can't help but notice this.

Nationwide, the number of people applying to dental schools has declined since the most recent peak 1997(8,602 applicants in 1997, 6362 in 2001).
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I didn't realize that there were so few😱
I know for a fact that med schools the most recent number I came across was something like 16K accepted out of 41K applicants. Even if we safely assume that there is another peak in applicants(due to poor job prospects in this economy) it's still so little. Why is it that so few dentists are admitted? The fact is that current demographic trends indicate the population will continue to grow beyond 300 million in the US, add to that retiring dentists and I have to suspect that the shortfall will be made up by foreign trained doctors.
 
There is something like 200 med schools in the U.S. but only 54 dental schools. That's one of the reasons why every year there is only 6000 DDS applicants (most of whom apply to 5-10 schools).

I wouldn't worry about an influx of foreign dentists just yet. Dentistry in the U.S. is a self-regulating profession, and at present the ADA has some pretty steep requirements a foreign dentist must fulfill (such as going through an accredited advanced-standing program, which is essentially repeating certain years of dental school!) if the foreign dentist wants to enter private practice in the U.S.. The investment a foreign dentist must make in time, effort and money is substancial.
 
Does anyone know whether there will be new dental school ant time soon? We have Arizona and UNLV seems quite new.
Like in 10 years, do you think the number of dental schools will increase to increase enrollment for the growing population and the retiring dentist?
 
Ecdoesit,

I don't forsee any new schools in the immediate future. Nova, UNLV, and Arizona are the newest of the bunch.

There is talk of a school at UNM (New Mexico), but that is just a thought at the present time.

The startup costs for d-schools are large, and that is often the major factor which hinders new ones from getting up and running.

By the way, I'm almost certain the at the number of applicants has risen above that 2001 number, although I don't know if it is above that 1997 quoted number.
 
Do you think the number is above 10,000?

Where can I get info on official admission stats for all dental schools?

Okay, I went to a local library(Newton Free Library) to look into dentistry.

First book I read was a dated Princeton Review Career Guides(1997).
Number of people in the profession: 174,000
% male: 75
% female: 25
avg hrs week: 50
avg start salary: $56,000
avg salary after 5 yrs: $90,000
avg salary 10 to 15 yrs: $200,000

Reasonable hours cited in over 90% of the surveys as most important factor to dentistry as opposed to other medical specialty.
Pay enourmous premiums for liability insurance, large sums for fixed costs such as rent and equipment.
Spend on about one afternoon a week handling paperwork and insurance claims as healthcare management changes the amount of time required to process paperwork will most likely increase.
Try to see as many patients because increase in patients increase in revenue.
Apprenticeship lasts around 5 yrs. Jr. associates either buy a larger share of the partnership or lleave to start their own practice.
25% of graduates buy into or purchase outright an existing practice immediately upon graduation where the jr. associate has financial stake in the practice but is truly training with more experienced dentists. Financing for recent grads is not a problem: Most dental practices are good investments if internal cash-flow is properly managed.

Dentists put too much time and effort into their professions to leae easily and the number bear this. Few change professions decide to specialize in orthodontics, oral surgery or relate medical field.

2yrs
apply what they learned.
Hours can be long as it is important for new dentists to take time to learn their patient's histories needs and personalities. Important to earn their patients' trust, generally assist more established practitioners.
5yrs
established reputations and build up client base. Find a daily routine that best suits them perform procedure without superviision. Take home pay rises as they pay off the initial charge of buying into existing practice. May work long hours during years 3 to 8 to build their practice with expectations of future rewards in the short run this can lead to dissatisfaction and uneven quality of life.
10yrs
Dentists who practiced for 10 yrs earn reasonable satisfaction from what they do. They have established a consistent and loyal client bases have a range of experience and a degree of expertise, and earn significant income. Many become involved in professional associations and professional philanthropy. Hours are still long, but they drop off over the nest 10 yrs.

20yrs
dentist may work parttime.
30yrs
many have retired.

Whew!! That was a lot.🙂
 
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